It's Time.

The bridge.  So much easier to cross than time.

Monday mornings are the hardest but not for all the reasons they should be.  I don't have to rush into the office or wonder about the stacks of work I left for myself on Friday.  Mondays aren't hard because I suddenly have to wake up early or because I haven't picked up the dry cleaning.  They used to be the day of labor that popped out the screeching, paper-suckling baby who would grow, mature and die by week's end.  Now, Mondays are no more emblematic of the beginning of some transient, professional journey than my well-worn sheepskin boots are of my readiness to run a marathon.

These days, Monday kicks me in the pants for reasons wholly unrelated to work or stress or voicemail messages.  More than anything else, Monday is more like my caustic grandma who insisted on reminding me of the vast separation between me and the oodles of cousins who beat me to her dilapidated yard by about 8 years.  "You'll never know what it was like to play with them, granddaughter," she said though I usually thought she was gargling.  "They had each other.  And you have no one to play with."  She would put some prunes in a plastic bowl and push them into my chest until the plastic folded over on itself.  "Now, get out there so I can watch my stories."

Nowadays, Monday is nothing more than a reminder that over here, camping so close to the international dateline, I am so far ahead of the rest of the world that I can't really play with it.  While facebook messages and emails remind me that I should be picnicking in a sunny corner of the park, or sipping a beer while playing scrabble on someone's ipad, or wandering mindlessly over sidewalks I've walked a million times before but never on this very Sunday which makes everything different and new, my calendar and solitude require that I suck up the fun and save it for later in the week.  Shit, I can't even stream Monday morning radio to jumpstart the calm stoicism demanded by the five days between the weekend.  The best I can ask from Sunday radio streaming into a Monday morning is Guy Noir and he doesn't tell me how the market is doing in clear terms.  Oh, wait, the market isn't even open.

On the other side of the river, we saw something.

This Monday, I vowed to do my best to integrate with the hubbub of the actual Monday transpiring beyond my ocean view.  I got up and surged into the week, hoping I wouldn't be spotted immediately as an intruder.  Strangely, I found no traffic out there, no groaners and not a whiff of the slightly despondent, Monday frenzy that I remember from my working days.

I came home and remembered my grandma.  I don't think of her often, but today, on this very isolated and distant Monday, I'm sending a shout through the ether to her man-hungry, perfectly coiffed soul.  Nice prep, Grandma.  I am keenly aware of my separation from the other kids.